A Rare Breed
by TourmalineTrue
Summary: The evolution of the relationship between Brian and Stewie.


**Author's Note: Just for a lark, I decided to publish this story I wrote as a Christmas present for namelesslunitic years ago. He has given his blessing for this, and I hope you all enjoy. :) For me, this isn't exactly new material- I still am not back into the flow of writing Brewie fics- but for most of you out there, it's new enough. ;P Please leave a review, if you feel so inclined. **

**Disclaimer: Family Guy = Not Mine. I have no claims to it whatsoever.**

**A Rare Breed**

_Outsider_

"Brian, do you want to feel the baby kicking?"

Brian, having just come down the stairs, stops on his way to the kitchen and looks back over his shoulder to where Lois is sitting on the couch with Chris and Meg on either side of her. Meg has her hand on her mother's distended belly, and Lois is smiling at the white dog charmingly, waiting for his response, urging him on with her kind, lovely eyes.

"Oh, my gosh, you have to, Brian, it's so cool!" Meg squeals, over-excitedly, in support of the idea.

"Um…sure." He slowly turns around and makes his way to the couch. The three Griffins perched there are all still staring at him; all still have their mile-wide, encouraging smiles trained on him. It makes him feel a little uneasy. He's been living here for a couple months now, just enough time for a sense of comfort to start to make itself known. A sense of comfort that he doesn't completely trust. It had taken only a matter of days for the Griffins- with all their insane quirks and dysfunctionality- to grow on him, and the warmth of the affection they'd already incited in him scared him a little, deep down. They'd all been very nice to him from the first, treating him as if he already belonged, but Brian's been through this before. The family that had "adopted" him from the puppy mill where he was born, for example. Who'd ripped him away from his mother, only to decide shortly thereafter that they didn't even want a dog. So as for the Griffins- when it comes right down to it, who are these people, really? Still strangers to him, really, and he to them. He can't help but feel like he's intruding upon a private family scene. There's a little voice in the back of his head that's telling him quite firmly that he has no right to claim a role in any part of this.

And to touch Lois like this…when she takes up his paw and places against her bulbous middle…it feels far too intimate. He blushes, discomfited. He's never felt a pregnant belly before. It's strange. He's not sure he likes it. What's more, Lois's breasts were plenty full before, and now they are swelled to approximately the size of beach volleyballs, and perilously close to his face. He fights valiantly not to look up.

Despite his awkward feelings, he holds his paw steady on the distended stomach for a minute or so, waiting to experience what they all so want him to. However, at least a full sixty seconds elapses and nothing happens.

"Darn it, he was doing it a moment ago," Lois remarks. "Be patient," she entreats the dog, putting his paw back when he starts to remove it. When another minute passes without the dog feeling the slightest movement beneath his paw, she sighs in evident disappointment at having her fun of showing off her bouncing baby boy even before he's made his world debut thwarted, but puts a cheerful spin on things.

"Perhaps you're a calming influence, Brian," she theorizes. "Ever since the very first time he did it, he's been a little ball of energy. It's as though he gets a real kick out of…well…_kicking_ me."

"Was I like that too, Mom?" inquires Chris, his scratchy voice aquiver with curiosity.

"No, sweetie," replies Lois. "In fact, you were pretty much the total opposite. For a while, we thought you might be dead in there, with how inactive you were being. Actually, I believe that was the first sign that your development was going to be retar-" She catches herself just in time. Well, not in time for Brian and Meg not to know what she was about to say, but in time for Chris.

Because he's retarded. Albeit a nice kid.

"What was I like, Mom?" Meg asks eagerly.

"Oh, how the hell should I remember?"

Brian can't take much more of this. He resents that he's been pulled into sharing in this, that he's expected to be excited over the event of an impending birth in a family that he's not sure if he's really even a part of, no matter how much he may yearn to be. He's not much of a kid person, anyway. Also, there's the matter of the temptation being strong to look up and burying his muzzle between Lois's giant boobies, something which he will probably not be forgiven for. "Lois, I'm sorry, I came down here because I was on my way out to pick up a box of Milk-Bones. If he's doing it later, maybe you can call me over and I'll make it in time for his Rockette's audition. " Just then, when he is about to take his paw away and walk off, he feels a firm nudge against the bottom of his paw.

Lois utters a quiet _oomph_.

"Oh! Oh, wow!" Brian exclaims, some small sense of wonderment taking hold despite himself. "That's it, huh?"

The baby kicks again, even more spiritedly than before. Lois grunts softly, grimacing.

"Hey, there, little guy." Brian addresses the baby bump and feels only a little foolish. "How's it going?" His question is met with the most vigorous kick yet.

"Ouch!" Lois yelps, and knocking Brian's paw away, she rubs her belly as though to soothe the little brute within. "Never mind, you don't calm him down. You get him riled up." She chuckles feebly. "I think he's responding to your voice, Brian."

"Cool," says the dog, feeling disproportionately exhilarated at the thought of having influence over this little Griffin who isn't even here yet.

The little fella kicks again, and Lois winces and yells at Brian, "Well, by all means, shut up!"

With her two born children's help, she rises from the couch and vanishes into the kitchen. Meg gets up as well and heads upstairs while Chris stays put and flips on the T.V. Brian lingers for a moment in his position front of the couch, ignoring the program that Chris has just put on and laughing silently to himself. At himself. It was ridiculous how important he felt after what he'd just experienced.

Could babies hear in the womb? At least some scientists said yes. So why _shouldn't_ Brian feel good? The kid knew when he was speaking and responded to _him_. Suddenly, Brian is very much looking forward to the baby's birth. He will be this child's first pet. He will have been here _before _the baby. He will no longer be the newest member of this household. This child will not have known this family without Brian in it.

_The Sane One_

Brian is half asleep on the sofa when he hears a car pull up. The dog reaches for the remote and switches off rerun of _All in the Family_ that's playing on the television. It's been so quiet this morning with the kids in school and Peter at the hospital with Lois. The baby, Stewart Gilligan Griffin, had been born yesterday. Meg and Chris had summoned to the hospital immediately after the birth, and Lois's parents had driven them up to make their infant brother's acquaintance. In an odd move, Brian thought, the family dog hadn't been invited to tag along and meet the new arrival, too. That was okay, though. In the last several months, he's grown much more secure about his position in the family. The rat bastards at the hospital probably discriminated against dogs or something. Anyway, Peter had stayed overnight at the hospital with his wife while Meg and Chris had returned home around dinnertime, and with nobody around for company besides them, Brian has spent pretty dull past evening and morning.

He slides off the sofa. He's a little groggy, but tries to compel himself to be alert. He shuffles over to the window and looks out.

He watches Peter and Lois emerge from the car and walk toward the house. Lois is clutching a blanket-swaddled bundle securely to her chest.

"Brian!" she says, voice ecstatic as she sails into the house moments later, beaming. Peter comes to stand next to her and puts his arm around her, smiling proudly.

"Hey, you guys, welcome home!"

He retreats from the window and returns to the couch, which Lois approaches.

"Brian, meet little Stewie."

She bends down so he can get an up-close look, while Peter ambles off toward the kitchen.

The baby is sleeping, and appears to be frowning in his sleep. Must have gas. Ah, well, it's Peter's kid, alright. It's cute enough, he supposes, but it…well, it has a deformed head. Like, in a major way. As in, it's shaped exactly like a football, not unlike the one belonging to the titular character in this one T.V. cartoon series, _Hey Arnold!_ Brian has to stop himself from commenting on the startling abnormality. Peter and Lois have eyes, after all.

The phone rings a few times, then stops.

"Lois, it's your mother!" Peter leans into the front room from the kitchen.

"Fine!" Lois calls back to him. "I'll be right there. Come in here and take Stewie."

"Aw, but _Lois_!" Peter whines. "I've already got my hands full with a foot of hard, spicy salami!"

"Peter, I promise you can have your sandwich soon, but for the moment you need to watch your son!"

Peter reenters the living, having evidently left the receiver of the phone on the kitchen wall hanging down by its chord. "No way, Lois! I know how you women are, yammering on for like a billion years about nothin'…"

"'About nothing'?! I just had a baby, I think that's kind of a big-"

"Give him to Brian to hold."

"Peter! It's not that simple, there's, well, there's a proper way to hold a baby, and…" she leans in close to Peter, evidently having forgotten about, or is underestimating, the acuity of Brian's canine hearing, "anyway, Brian is a dog. I'm not saying that he would _mean_ to hurt Stewie, but babies are fragile, and animals sometimes aren't…careful, he might try to play with him a bit too enthusiastically…treat him like a chew toy, or-"

"But Lois," Peter protests, confused by her apprehensive attitude, "this is _Brian _we're talking about. And remember when I first brought him home, and we talked about how great the timing was? That we were getting a new dog right when we were getting set to have a baby? It was supposed to be such a lucky coincidence because we thought Brian would, like, instantly bond with the kid, like you said happens sometimes, and be protective of him."

Lois dithers a moment longer, before, worrying her lip, bending again and transferring Stewie to Brian's arms. The canine can't help but glare at her a bit as he holds out his arms in just the right way, demonstrating that he knows exactly how to cradle a baby. Lois looks slightly chastened for a moment, then trots away toward the kitchen.

And so Brian is left scoffing and fuming over the prejudice and narrow-mindedness Lois had just displayed. She can't really think he's like that? Honestly, he's disappointed by her ignorant, bigoted, and insulting attitude.

The baby is stirring in his arms. Its- his- eyelids are starting to flutter, and Brian holds his breath. Moments later, the baby's eyes open completely and stare directly into his and Brian freezes.

Is it going to cry?

So preoccupied is he with this worry that for many seconds he fails to notice that something's wrong. Those eyes…that bizarre gleam of intelligence in them is so disconcertingly beyond what an ordinary baby should possess. He begins to become fully aware of this as the infant continues to stare at him silently. A baby that young shouldn't even be able to distinguish individual features on a face yet, let alone bore their eyes right into yours.

"What the _hell_?"

Shock rips through Brian, and he almost drops the thing in his arms. He just manages not to, and looks at the baby in stupefaction. Because the voice he'd just heard, that crystal clear, mature British voice, had come from _it_.

"Now, I knew whereupon I made my debut into the world and saw them that my parentals were the commonest of women and a fat imbecile, and that I would not be able to realistically expect much from them, but have they actually given me away to be reared by a slobbering pack of mangy street curs? This is insupportable!"

Had Brian fallen back asleep holding the baby? But of course that must be the only logical explanation. Babies can't talk, and they especially don't talk so articulately, in perfectly enunciated adult voices.

The creature has its arms crossed now and is scowling at him most severely.

"Yoo-hoo, Lassie? Go get Lois and the Fat Man! Go get 'em now!"

"Lois! _Lois_!" Brian practically dumps the thing out of his lap and onto the couch as he hops down from the couch and hollers for its mother, staring with fear at this creature who's in the guise of a mere baby.

In the blink of an eye, the woman of the Griffin house comes racing into the room. "What? What's wrong? What is it, Brian?" she asks anxiously, bustling over to the couch and gathering her newborn into her arms, not even noticing that the days-old infant had been sitting up, able to hold its head upright without any assistance.

"What did you give birth to?!"

"What?" asks Lois distractedly. She unwraps the supposed baby from its blanket and proceeds to run an examining hand over its blue sleeper-clad form, checking to make sure there is nothing visibly wrong with her child. She doesn't even flinch when the thing slaps her hands away, but Brian does. Lois then sits down on the sofa and brings the creature onto her lap and begins to give it a gentle bounce up and down with her knee.

"That- that kid! It's not…_right_...i-it's abnormal!"

"_Excuse_ me?" questions the woman indignantly, continuing to bounce the still-glowering tot lightly on her knee.

"What's all the hubbub?" Peter wants to know, meandering into the room, the question muffled through a mouthful of sandwich.

"Your baby was talking to me! In complete sentences! And completing insulting sentences! And in a British accent. And he‒ " Brian stops speaking when he notices that the infant in question is looking rather queasy, going cockeyed and holding its stomach. Seconds later, the thing upchucks, thin streams of milky vomit running down his chin and dripping onto Lois's pant leg.

"Ugh!" cries Lois, holding Stewie away from her body as she quickly gets to her feet. Peter looks grossed out, too, and glances down at his sandwich, studying it. He then gives an unconcerned shrug and remarks.

"Ya know, I think this thing could use some more mayo."

Lois fishes a tissue out of her pants' pocket and wipes Stewie's mouth. "Yuck," she mutters, making a face, the proceeds to coo at him, "It's okay, baby, yes, I'm sorry, I know I'm the one who made you sick."

"Hmph. You don't know how right you are," retorts the alleged baby, still appearing somewhat woozy.

"Oh, my god, Lois, don't even tell me you didn't hear that!"

Lois turns to Brian and says impatiently, "Brian, for heaven's sake, Stewie's just a regular baby! I believe I talked to you about cutting back on the weed now that there's an infant in the house. If I have to do it, you do, too."

Toting her little mutant, she makes her way to the stairs, baby-talking to him and assuring him that she's going to get him all cleaned up good as new.

Brian gulps.

Why does he get the distinct impression that this household is in for a world of trouble now that this baby is in it?

_Manny_

Story time for Stewie.

Brian climbs the stairs wearily and starts toward Stewie's room, having been sent there by Lois, who'd come to him talking of being burdened with a backlog of housework she hadn't been able to get to earlier because she's been too busy out and about running errands, but she wanted to get them done before bed. Unfortunately, tending to these didn't leave enough time to tuck in her youngest and read him a bedtime story.

"He's already in his pajamas, Brian. If you could just go up there and read to him, it would really be a big help to me. It doesn't have to be a long book; he's more tired than he's putting on. He just loves to be read to."

It's an assignment he could do without. The baby doesn't like him, for whatever misbegotten reason. Maybe he's just not a dog person. Maybe he prefers cats instead. Brian snorts. He thinks back on how, a month ago, he'd been on doggie death row, marked for euthanasia at the pound. Upon winning his appeal and making his triumphant return home, he'd found a feline with a rather cantankerous disposition living in the Griffin house. His replacement, apparently. That had stung a little. Luckily, no one had insisted on keeping it, and they'd been able to pawn it off on Quagmire.

He's torn about how it makes him feel to be used as a glorified manny to Stewie. Requests to perform these caregiver-like tasks for the kid have been occurring with increasing frequency lately. On the one hand, Brian's not exactly thrilled about it because Stewie's difficult to deal with. He doesn't know why the child has to be so goddamn unpleasant when there's nothing wrong with his life. God, if Brian had had a mother like Lois…

On the other, at least it's like Brian's kind of earning his keep. And it beats entering dog shows to do his part for the family. Also, when it comes down to it, there isn't much he wouldn't do to curry favor with Lois. He just loves making her happy.

"She's such a lazy trollop, honestly," remarks Stewie airily from his crib as the dog enters the room. He knows why Brian's here. This has been happening frequently lately. He flips over onto his side and props himself up on an elbow, eyes watching every move Brian takes. "Someone ought to slip her some methamphetamines. They'd either kill her, or make her more efficient in accomplishing her housewifely chores, but either way, circumstances would improve."

Brian ignores the little demon's nasty comments about his mother and makes his way over to the bookshelf, pulling a particular book from it. He holds his selection up so Stewie can see it.

"Have you heard this one yet? I got it for you for your birthday, remember?"

"Why the deuce would I remember?" the baby sneers, lowering himself down to return to lying on his back. He stares up at his mobile with a harassed sigh.

"No reason." Brian makes his way over to the crib and plops down upon the little stepstool that sits beside it. "It's called _Goodnight Moon_."

Stewie offers up a haughty yawn. "Mm. Sounds spellbinding."

"Well, however spellbinding, or not, it is, it's what you get."

Stewie must've been very tired, Brian realizes as he nears the end of the book. _Goodnight Moon_ is not exactly what you'd call long, even for a children's book, and by the time he's on the second to last page, Stewie's eyes are already only open a crack, with lines of fatigue around them.

"….goodnight stars, goodnight air, goodnight noises everywhere."

And with that, the book goes shut, and Brian gets up from his seat and stands at the side of the crib, looking down at the near-drowsing baby. Stewie rolls onto his side and, sticking his hand through the bars of the crib, pats the spine of the book weakly with one finger.

"Goodnight, book."

It's maybe the most babyish thing Brian's ever heard come out of Stewie's mouth- that expression said, ridiculously, to an inanimate object in such a sweet, innocent voice. It endears the child to the dog- just a little bit, just for a brief moment in time.

Stewie's finger moves from the book and slides down to Brian's wrist, where it begins to rub gingerly, grazing over the fur so that Brian can barely even feel it.

"Soft," he murmurs groggily, half-asleep.

Brian just stands there awkwardly, allowing the delicate caress. It's over in a matter of seconds, and then Stewie's arm falls down limp at his side.

"Not… a bad…" he yawns widely, "choice, dog." And with that he drops off to sleep, appearing so very harmless, and at peace, seemingly perpetual scowl worn away in the tranquility of a child's sleep. Brian starts to reach out, then abruptly pulls his hand back. It twitches once he does, apparently determined about its prior course and he sighs and tries again. Not knowing where the compulsion to do this comes from, he hesitantly touches one of Stewie's full cheeks with the back of one paw. The baby murmurs lightly, and Brian tenses, afraid of getting caught. But Stewie stays asleep, letting out a sigh of content and rubbing the side of his face against Brian's paw. The corner of the dog's mouth curves involuntarily upward slightly before he retracts his paw and creeps out of the room on tiptoe.

_Rover_

The train chugs along and Brian remains sitting on the side of the car, legs hanging over the edge, but not very far on account of his height. He looks down at them as he swings them back and forth, the melody of the song he'd been singing with Stewie about half an hour ago on repeat in his mind. His mind, which is in turmoil after the emotional upheaval he's undergone that day.

What a trip. What a mess of a trip. Seriously, why does this type of thing always seem to happen to _him_? He extracts another cigarette from the pack in his pocket, lights it, and takes a drag. As he exhales, he can't help but darkly chuckle to himself. _"This type of thing"? But it's not a 'type'! This doesn't happen to anyone, not even to me, even with all the rotten luck that seems to follow me around everywhere. This is without precedent. _

_How can I begin to fully process this?_

To go from expecting to see one's mother and finally achieve some healing after being parted from her in a traumatic episode and acquiring abandonment issues as a result, to arriving at one's birthplace and learning that she is dead (never mind that her corpse has been desecrated- stuff and used as living room decor), and instead of healing, find out about something that had caused him more pain.

The disappointment over not having gotten to see his mother when he'd been counting on it is a bitter pill to swallow.

Brian is not stupid. Knowing that his mother has not been anthropomorphic, but an ordinary dog in every way, it had not been in her nature to react the way a human mother would- missing and longing for and searching the ends of the earth for her offspring had they been taken away from her. Brian is aware of this. It was just hurtful that she didn't put up any kind of a fight to keep him there. But he's also aware that he would've had to have left that old farm someday, anyway, and actually, the fact that it happened early was probably for the best. It had allowed him to experience more of life than he otherwise would have.

It's like he told Luke: he has a great life. He'd thought and felt that way then, when he was saying it. He doesn't think and feel that way now? Brian shakes his head in annoyance with himself and stabs his cigarette out on the floor.

No. He feels the same way. He _does_ have a great life. It may not be perfect but it's his.

As for his mother ‒ inasmuch as she could- she had loved him. He supposes that'll have to be enough to hold onto.

He hears a soft, whining noise behind him, and looks over his shoulder.

The baby, asleep on a sack of something in the corner, trembles periodically in the slight chill of the night. Brian looks on, a small pang of sympathy affecting him, but he ignores it for now. He lifts his arms overhead and stretches, then extends them out in front of himself and cracks his knuckles. Stewie shivers again, curling deeper into a fetal position, and Brian thinks. They'd apparently shared a bed back in that hotel, although Brian had been drunk that night and doesn't remember it. Brian has such an urge to go over to the kid now and curl around him to keep him warm. He's surprised by the impulse, and more than a little conflicted over whether or not he should act on it.

Other dogs wouldn't hesitate. It's a classic tableau, the baby and the dog. Only, _they_ are far from the average baby and dog. Brian doesn't want to bring on some rant from the kid about Brian daring to think he has the right to touch him. There's another thing that gives Brian pause, too, prodding at the back of his mind: it's stupid, but he can't but wonder if to follow through on the idea that he's entertaining would be too…well, _gay_.

Brian mentally snorts at that. But really, why should he have concerns about _that_? Stewie doesn't even _have _a sexuality yet, or likely much knowledge of differentiating between typical and atypical gender interactions, so he'd be surprised if the child leapt to any conclusions to find Brian beside him when he woke up.

A thought enters Brian's head.

_This trip might have been so much worse if Stewie hadn't been here. _

If he'd made this trip for the sole purpose of confronting his mother, instead of just making it into an afterthought mission when this mishap-laden mission to escort Stewie home made yet another unexpected turn, and a stroke of coincidence brought them close to Austin.

If he hadn't had the responsibility of bringing Stewie home, he may have just gone and gotten super wrecked after he found out the bad news that she had died. If he had been sitting in a bar now instead of on a train, he may have just sat and drank _long_ past the point when he should have stopped. And even if he'd stopped before he killed himself via alcohol poisoning, some awful calamity might still have befallen him through other means. Drunk and depressed in a strange town was not the best scenario to be in.

He's on his way home now, but without Stewie, he may have never made it home at all.

The song they'd just shared, the game of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon they'd played before in that stolen car, being able to interact (even if often not all that pleasantly) with somebody else intelligent for once, Brian had to grudgingly concede to himself that, on rare occasions, or at least in a pinch, Stewie could be…well, kinda, sorta…fun.

Are he and Stewie going to get along better now, now that they've gone through this odd journey together? Only time will tell, but Brian's not counting on a miracle. He still doesn't have the best opinion of the kid, and he knows the little demon was never too fond of him, either.

The child makes another pathetic, tiny whimpering sound and Brian glances at him again. He's still shivering. And Brian notices for the first time that he himself is, too.

Fuck it. It's just sharing body heat. If Stewie wants to be an ungrateful little prick and make something of it, so be it. But at least if he gets accused of caring about him, he won't have to admit it, since he'll be looking out for himself, too, by cuddling up to the kid. Rising to his feet, he makes his way over to where the Stewie lies and lies down himself. He rests half-on, half-on the bag that Stewie occupies, which feels like it has something like sand in it, and isn't the most cushy padding in the world.

Still, he's dog tired and the physical closeness (even with Stewie, much as he's loath to admit it) feels good and comforting. Without a second thought, he drapes an arm around the dozing baby's form. The rhythmic uniform sound of the train wheels on the track as the locomotive bears them toward home doesn't take long to lull him gratefully into a sound, much-needed sleep.

He is jostled out of it in the morning by Stewie elbowing him roughly in the side. A moment is needed as it sometimes is after an eventful day, especially one that ends with a night spent away from home, for Brian to take stock of the situation and realize where he's at and why. After he remembers about the train, he soon takes notice of the fact that it is not moving.

"We're in Quahog, Brian. I suggest you get up and get off of this train with me. Otherwise you're likely to wind up in Timbuktu before you know it."

"Okay, okay, I'm up, I'm up." Brian climbs unsteadily onto slightly-aching legs. The sack of sand-stuff hadn't provided much cushioning, and having spent the night on the train car's hard metal floor had done a bit of a number on his back as well. As he lumbers toward the edge of the car, where Stewie is waiting to disembark from the train, a question unexpectedly forms in his mind. Has Stewie ever called him by name before? It's usually "fleabag" or "mutt", or, if Stewie's feeling generous, simply "dog". He tries to think back and remember if, during all the chaotic events of their trip back home, the baby had addressed him as "Brian", but he can't.

"Is that the next stop- Timbuktu?"

"No, I heard a few of the railway workers talking, and apparently Buffalo is. I was exaggerating for effect. But with the way you were out like a light, the possibility can't be entirely dismissed that by the time you awoke on your own, the train _would_ have been in Timbuktu."

Brian's surprised, come to think about it, that Stewie even woke him instead of letting him ride all the way to Buffalo _or_ Timbuktu. He just nods, though, and watches as Stewie carefully lowers himself down out of the railcar, swinging his legs over the side and then turning his body around while his tiny fingers grip the edge of the car. He then jumps down.

Practically as soon as Stewie is standing with both feet on the ground, the train gives a great jerk forward before beginning to roll along down the track at a shuddering crawl.

Brian freezes, startled, and grabs onto the side of the car, gazing down at the ground that is starting to move by ever more expeditiously below his feet as the train gradually picks up speed and move more smoothly.

Stewie walks at a hurried, not quite jogging, but quicker than walking pace beside the train.

"Well, don't just stand there like a dunce! Jump, dog!" the kid yells.

Brian takes his advice and hurls himself off of the railcar, mindful to jump far enough out, landing on his knees in the gravel beside the train tracks, and partially on his hands, which he'd thrust out to protect himself from hitting his head or his face .

He hisses when it hurts to stand and looks down at his knee. He must have cut it pretty bad; a moderate amount darkish liquid, blood, seeps out of the wound to stain his white fur.

Stewie bends down to inspect the canine's injury. Brian tenses and frowns; it's all he can do not to flinch away cowardly, certain the kid's going to stick his finger in the wound, or rub some of the dirt and pebbles that cling to the blood into the cut or something. However, Stewie only looks, nothing more.

"Ouch," he says after a moment.

Brian ignores the useless comment and begins walking down the gravel path, toward the train station. From behind him, he can hear Stewie's little feet smack against the grit and pebbles as he hurries to catch up.

"You know, our journey home isn't _technically_ over," the baby points out. "Let's play another traveling game. I spy with my little eye-"

Brian interrupts him. "Lois is waiting for us inside the train station."

He keeps walking and he can hear that Stewie does, too. He can also hear the baby mutter resentfully, "I spy with my little eye…a pathetic kiss-ass, horndog with a yellow belly who would rather run off to work his smarm routine with my insupportable mother than risk losing to me and the ingeniously ambiguous yet accurate clues in a game of I spy."

_Guardian_

Brian's feeling slightly low.

He's held up well the past couple months since the breakup. Sure, the immediate aftermath had been depressing. No one likes being dumped. But following the unpleasant shock of abruptly being dropped kicked to the curb by a girl he'd really expected to put up with anything, there had been a quite pleasant sense of freedom, and of relief. He was single again, no longer answerable to anybody, released from fulfilling boyfriend-ly obligations, such as attending strangers' weddings, helping cousins that are not his move, and explaining TV Guide, for a woman he rarely felt was worth the trouble.

And then the regrets had started making themselves at home.

The thing is, he had thought he knew what it had been about. He'd been staying in a relationship with Jillian purely for sex. It certainly hadn't been for stimulating conversation or a deep emotional connection. But still, it was been the longest relationship he's ever had, and now that she's gone, things feel a bit weird. She had been easy to be with (apart from her…how to put it delicately? Her maddening lack of even basic brainpower.), just a chill girl, sweet uncomplicated girl who'd been kind to him. Nothing is simple about a relationship after you grow sincerely attached to the person. And he had. He misses her. He misses having someone. Now that he's had some time to feel her absence, and he finds himself thinking often of her beautiful face and her beautiful breasts and how very _very_ much he hates being alone.

What if he never finds somebody to share his life with?

All this he broods over while sitting on a bench surrounded by dozens of unruly children running this way and that, their hyperactive shrieks filling the background.

Currently, charged with taking care of Stewie for the afternoon, he's allowed himself to be talked into taking the kid to this play center place that has just opened up in town. It's a bit like Cheesy Charlie's (Which had been closed down several months ago. Under investigation by the state. All kinds of lurid allegations). It's noisy and chaotic and horrible and Brian probably would never have agreed to come if Stewie hadn't pester him so much, and also if there wasn't a liquor store just down the street where he could make a pit stop on the way home.

Stewie is currently playing in the ball pit. He's not supposed to be, as he doesn't meet the age requirement, but he had his mind set on playing in there, and when Stewie is determined to do something, when it just involves breaking such a minor rule as this (as opposed to violating a major law), Brian's not going to try and deter him. Well, any more than giving him a quick word of warning when, upon arriving here, the kid had first expressed his desire to frolic in the ball pit.

"Ugh. You know those things are teeming with germs, right?"

"Pfft. This coming from somebody who cleans every last disgusting part of their body with their own tongue, as well as who likes to feast from every garbage can on our block like it's the line at the buffet."

"Okay, fine," Brian had said, giving up already. "I should have known you'd be all too eager to dive right into anything involving lots of sticky, sweaty balls."

Stewie had glared at him for that before scurrying off to do what he wanted. As he took off, Brian shook his head and chuckled wryly to himself, wondering what the hell that glare was about. Why should Stewie be offended by implications that the kid liked dudes…in that way? Stewie was so clearly bent. Brian wondered when the day would come that he'd finally realize it. It didn't make any sense; Brian, whenever he made a crack about Stewie's sexuality, was only working with what the boy gave him. Stewie certainly doesn't act like he's got anything to hide when he blithely parades around with his fey mannerisms and blatantly homosexual remarks. Brian himself had been hit on innumerable times by the kid. Probably the most overt instance had occurred back during his short-lived cohabitation period with Jillian. It was minutes after they'd broken up, and Stewie had urged him to sleep with somebody else to get back at her. Then he had climbed atop of Brian and gazed at him with what Brian assumed was supposed to be an enticing look, complete with bedroom eyes and all.

On the plus side, there's a chance Stewie might at least be doing _some_ growing up, because even if the kid hasn't matured enough to come to terms with being gay, Brian has noticed some subtle changes in Stewie's overall behavior. Sure, the he's still an insufferable little wiseass, still disdainful of humanity, but he also has seemed more relaxed lately, less all-around hateful. He talks less about diabolical plans, and his polite side has been more often on display, as well.

About a week ago, Stewie had built a simulation machine to find out how making a concentrated effort to kill Lois and take over the world would play out for him. According to what Brian had been told, things had not worked out well for Stewie in the simulation. Brian wonders if it's a coincidence.

Just then, he is plucked out of his thought process when he hears an adult voice yelling something and looks up, toward the ball pit.

Stewie is brandishing a bazooka-type weapon at the other children wallowing in the sea of plastic balls. To Brian's immense relief, when Stewie fires, it only unleashes more plastic balls. Granted, they _are_ being fired directly into the faces of the other children, but they're still much better than bullets, or fire, or lasers. These kids got off easy. However, a nearby play center employee, knowing Stewie, doesn't see it that way. Charging forward, he seizes Stewie's arm and yanks him, by his arm, up out of the ball pit. Stewie lets out a yelp in response to the rough treatment. Once the play center employee places the kid down on the ground, he lets go of Stewie's arm only to grab onto his shoulders and begin shaking him while rebuking him loudly and in very harsh language. Stewie's lower lip trembles, and his eyes well up with tears.

Brian shoots up off the bench as though a fire has been lit under his ass.

"Hey! Hey! Buddy?" Brian jogs over steps in between Stewie and the play center employee. "Leave him alone, okay?"

The employee relinquishes his hold on Stewie. Straightening up, he gazes down his nose at Brian, unrepentant. "He wasn't even supposed to be in there."

"You acted out of line. You should have come to me to make sure that _appropriate_ disciplinary actions were taken," says Brian, stressing the word 'appropriate'. He grabs Stewie's arm and pulls the kid over to stand next to him.

"I had no idea who he came in here with," states the employee, which, if true, would be a very good point. Except Brian can't let him off the hook even if it is true, because this dickwad had no business laying hands on Stewie, even if he was the only one around to correct the situation. "And anyway, _you _weren't supervising him properly. _I _saw a child who was acting in an unacceptable, out of control manner, and endangering the other kids, so I stepped in. My number one priority is to ensure the safety of the children here."

Brian snorts disdainfully. "Yeah. It's _real_ obvious how much you care about the welfare of children. Emotional welfare included. I'm sure absolutely _no_ kids are going to wind up traumatized if you keep manhandling and screaming them out like that. C'mon, Stewie. Let's go."

Stewie pauses when they're a few feet from the door and looks at Brian with wide eyes. He's never been the type to say thank you, and he doesn't say it now. At least not verbally.

Brian smiles slightly. "Ya owe me one," he informs the kid teasingly.

Stewie regards him with his customary haughty, disparaging smirk. "Yeah, right. Like I would ever be indebted to a scuzzy mongrel like you."

Brian scoffs. "Last time I ever help you out."

He moves forward and pushes open the door. As they're walking through the parking lot, Stewie turns to Brian and asks flirtatiously, "So, uh, are you really going to…_discipline _me?"

"You wouldn't like my type of discipline." He sees Stewie open his mouth as though to ask further questions, or to protest, and preempts whatever annoying thing the child might have to say by stating grimly, "It's not the kind you're thinking about."

They've reached Brian's car and the dog opens up the passenger side door and helps Stewie get buckled into his car seat. He then goes around to the other side of the vehicle, claims his place behind the wheel, and fastens his seatbelt.

"Oh, well. Thanks for having my back back there."

Brian freezes for a moment upon actually being thanked by Stewie. Then he pushes aside his shock and starts the engine to his car. But as he does, he thinks about the other thing regarding Stewie he'd been pondering back inside the play center. About how Stewie might yet become a good person someday. Maybe…

But he's not going to count chickens before they hatch. It'll take a lot more than a meager thank you to persuade Brian that Stewie is on the road tochanging his ways.

_Fiend_

Brian is a master of the deadpan expression. He is almost able to keep it even when confronted with a highly suggestive photograph of Stewie- kneeling on a bed in just a pair of tightey whiteys, thumbed away from his hips provocatively, while a finger of the other hand travels toward his open, awaiting mouth in a gesture even more obscene.

"Who the _fuck_ took these?!"

"A professional photographer, that's who!" retorts Stewie, sharply defensive, taking back the pictures in a hurry and putting them down on a nearby chair.

Brian doesn't let on how seeing that racy photo had affected him; when Stewie thrusts a script at him and says, "Take me through my lines," the dog obediently begins reading for the character Stewie indicates.

On the inside, however, he's experiencing strong, dual emotions. One of them is genuine abhorrence. He frantically endeavors to determine how much manipulation Stewie likely was a victim of to get him to model in that sleazy way. There's always the chance that there was little to none, and that's disturbing, too. Even knowing how much more radically advanced he is than his peers in many areas of life, the fact that Stewie may be getting such a goddamn early start in sexual matters, too, is acutely unsettling. O course, the kid regularly presents himself as someone who is doing precisely that, but this is different. Even if Stewie _did _set out to get pictures of that kind taken, whoever was willing to go along with photographing little baby Stewie like that is a pervert, plain and simple.

Along with the feelings of concern, however, Brian's feeling something else, too: the stirrings of desire.

As Stewie goes on to make Brian run lines with him, the dog can't even concentrate. He just keeps seeing the image of Stewie in briefs, posed so sexily, in his mind's eye. As Stewie launches into giving him a lecture about acting, Brian puts down his script and gives in. He reaches again for the pile of photos, even though it occurs to him that after seeing that one, anybody would have already grasped the nature of these photos, and what the successive ones are probably like. It probably seems weird that he wants to see them. What's his excuse for continuing to look at these pictures? What if Stewie calls him on it?

He can't exactly just _stop_, looking, though, just like that.

And fortunately, Stewie is too focused on giving an effective line-reading to notice Brian going through the through the photos.

The next one shows Stewie lying on his back facing the camera, his legs lifted and forming a 'V' in the air while Stewie , bracing himself on his forearms, peers through them, lips quirked seductively. One of his hands reaches around, his fingers resting pointedly close to the crack of his ass.

Brian wants to drool. He wants to take this bunch of photos someplace he can be alone and jerk off like mad. He keeps his mask of impassivity in place, though, as he flips to the next photo.

It's one he can't possibly be deadpan about.

"Oh, my _god_!"

He's looking at a photo of Stewie's penis. Nothing else. Just his dick- his erect dick- in close-up.

Stewie snatches the pictures back from the dog, his little face crumpled in guilt. Brian's reaction seems to have shamed the child about letting this so-called "professional photographer" take that lewd close-up.

"_Please_ don't tell Mom, he told me that's what a headshot was!"

Brian's aghast. Knowing that this perverted predator photographer has seen Stewie buck naked and aroused that he's been allowed to see something so private, makes him sick to his stomach with fury.

He could tear that guy to shreds for taking that picture.

The dog wrests the stacks of photos out of Stewie's hands.

"Okay, well, obviously, you won't be submitting any of these. And to make sure that you don't…and to make sure that they don't fall into the wrong hands…I'm going to destroy them. They're completely inappropriate, and really, I ought to go to the police with these and have that photographer arrested. Whoever took these is a sick, sick bastard."

_Friend_

"Oh, Briiaannn!" Stewie squeals loudly, the pitch of his voice gaining elevation the more their sled loses it. The baby, who's sitting in front of Brian, turns and wraps his arms as far as he can around the dog's chest, squeezing his massive eyes shut and laughing in terror as the sled shoots like rocket down the snowy hill. At the bottom, the baby continues to clutch at the dog as the sled takes a while to come to a complete stop, gradually losing momentum until eventually all movement of the vehicle ceases. Stewie stays clinging to Brian for a moment longer, until the dog, starting to feel rather awkward, just sitting there dumbly with Stewie embracing him like this, shifts as if to stand up.

Stewie catches the hint and relinquishes the handfuls of fur he'd been grasping and attempts to climb off of the sled. As he does so, however, his foot catches, and he trips and falls face first into the snow. Brian laughs.

"Bah!" the baby exclaims, raising his head, an indignant glare on his face.

He's got snow on his nose. He looks adorable.

Brian offers a paw to help him to his feet.

Stewie accepts it and once standing, starts bouncing up and down on his boot-shod feet excitedly, exclaiming, "My word, but that _was_ a rush! I was so terrified, and yet positively exhilarated at the same time! And now I feel like such a survivor to have made it through that!"

Brian chuckles. Honestly, the stuff that manages to rattle Stewie, when most of the time he doesn't bat an eye at the most perilous of circumstances.

"Do we dare go again?" the baby asks, but apparently, Brian has little say in the matter, for Stewie is already tramping back up the hill, leaving behind Brian to drag the sled. Brian frowns and kicks at the wooden conveyance lightly, thinking what he should do is just walk off and let the presumptuous child get his own damn sled up the hill.

And in the old days, that's what he _would _do, while telling himself that the child has no right to expect to be able to use him as a sled dog, nor to be so demanding of his time. But the problem is, ever since they'd gotten trapped together in that bank vault, their relationship has gotten so much closer. After having opened his heart up to Stewie about his battle with depression and thoughts of suicide, the child had comforted him. To hear Stewie say that he gave his life purpose had melted Brian's heart all over the place. Stewie words had given him real consolation, and resonated with him deeply. And they'd made it so that from then on, it's been harder than it ever was to refuse whatever favor the kid wants from him. Unless it's something especially abhorrent or illegal. Though even then, Brian has found that he, while he has his limits, he can also be more flexible than he'd ever believed of himself.

What can he say? He's just affection-starved.

Fortunately, Stewie really has undergone a major personality overhaul, and his penchant for such things has greatly diminished.

There was another incident, too, that had helped to make Brian such a sucker for Stewie. It had been when the dog had planned on fatally donating his kidneys to Peter. The depth of Stewie's devastation when he'd thought he was going to lose Brian had been touching to say the least. For Brian, believing that he was going to have to say goodbye to this amazing little kid who depended on him had been the hardest part of preparing to "close the book". Going through that emotional hell had served to further underscore how much they really were to each other.

Never in his life before had he felt so important to somebody. So cared for.

So today, Brian grabs hold of the rope attached to the sled and starts to tow it up the hill. Marching at a brisk pace and with his slightly longer strides, it doesn't take long for him to catch up to Stewie. As they trek on up the hill side by side, Stewie inquires out of the blue,

"Have you ever read _Ethan Frome_, Brian?"

Brian nods. "Yes, I have."

Stewie doesn't say anything else, and the oddly placed silence has Brian wondering just why the kid had asked his question in the first place.

So he asks the child, "Why did you wanna know?"

Stewie remains quiet for a long beat, long enough to be strange. Brian turns and looks at the boy. Stewie sees him looking and gives a small, awkward cough. He has a peculiar, vaguely wistful expression on his face.

"I just thought it was so tragically beautiful, didn't you?"

"Not really. A botched suicide attempt in which the main character and his lover end up lame and fully paralyzed, respectively, trapped forever under the roof of the man's spiteful, sickly wife, and they can't even take solace in the whole concept of 'at least we have each other', because they're no longer even in love? That's not 'tragically beautiful'. It's just tragic." He pants a little as they near the apex of the hill, watching his visible breath dance in the air in from of him. "I thought the whole book was pretty wishy-washy from start to finish."

"Well, anymore you're just critical of any author that isn't _you_," the baby responds dismissively.

Brian huffs in mild annoyance; then, as they've reached the top of the hill, takes the opportunity to have a good glance around the park to see what the rest of the family is doing. Chris is making a snowman version of himself that very much resembles the real thing, with a few notable peculiarities: as a snowman, he has very muscular arms, one of which holds what looks to be an easel, while his head wears a beret. Not far from where the middle Griffin crafts his masterpiece, Meg is feeding birds from a bag of breadcrumbs, attracting them to with her exceptional birdcalls. Brian can also see the street in front of the park's entrance from here, and so observes as well Lois waiting in the car, reading a magazine.

Peter is with Quagmire and both of them have tennis rackets strapped to their feet. They appear to be trying to have a race. The two of them stand next to each other, poised to start running, with the destination apparently being a gap between two bushes a few yards ahead of them. When they take off, however, Peter doesn't make it probably even a foot before he falling down. Quagmire doesn't make it much further, maybe a couple of steps. After much struggle to return to an upright position, they both finally manage to get clumsily to their feet and start the race over… several times. Each of their attempts to reach the finish line are not only futile, but extremely short-lived.

Peter suddenly looks up at the hill, spots Brian, and waves at him enthusiastically, while Quagmire stands by, glowering.

"Hey- hey, Br-Brian! C-come referee this…this here schnowshnoe race!" He shouts to the dog, his speech slurred. He puts down the waving hand and holds up his other, toasting Brian with a canteen that almost certainly contains something alcoholic.

The dog mulls it over for a few seconds, glancing thoughtfully back and forth between Peter and Stewie.

"Enough sledding for today, I think."

Stewie looks at him in cross disapproval, folding his arms over his chest and pouting.

"I'll come back," Brian promises, and the kid's expression softens a bit.

"I'll come back," he goes on, "and we'll build a snow fort together. How does that sound?"

"Well," the baby concedes, "it sounds alright, I guess. I mean, someone with _my_ engineering abilities doesn't really need a second pair of hands to construct a _snow fort_, and yours will probably prove more of a liability than a help, but I suppose that's an endeavor I wouldn't mind taking on with you. After all, everything's more fun with friends, right?"

_Damn Dirty Dog_

It's amazing, really, how much a person's capable of lying to oneself.

All that time ago, recumbent on his therapist's couch, Brian had wondered over how it had taken as long as it did for him to realize that he had romantic feelings for Lois. Of course, he'd known since the first time he ever saw her that he was sexually attracted to her, but the realization that his feelings ran deeper than that had been had taken about a year and a half to occur. He was no longer in love with her. His affection for her had turned into the platonic variety, though he still considered her to be hot as hell. Who wouldn't , after all, with _those _t & a?

What he's interested in knowing now is how long he's been lying to himself about Stewie. What had been the catalyst, that flicker of a moment (however fleeting) when he'd first looked at Stewie and the groundwork had been laid, be it even with a toothpick, for the growing obsession he was now housed in?

Peter and Lois are away from the house, having decided to have a romantic couple's weekend after Quagmire had given them a voucher for a free two nights' stay at the Park Barrington Hotel. Meg and Chris are absent, too. They both recently joined the high school's show choir. Chris because he has the hots for some girl who participates in it, and Meg because thanks to _Glee_, show choir is now cool, and thus Connie D'Amico is in it, and Meg has jumped aboard that bandwagon, hoping to finally get in good with her. Both of these efforts probably destined to end quite badly. Anyway, they'd gone to some statewide holiday singing competition thing in Woonsocket.

As for Stewie, he'd been put to bed a half hour ago.

Brian has stolen off to the basement this evening to indulge in what is by far the guiltiest pleasure of his life. He lies on his side on the floor, paw coiled securely around his cock as he begins to slowly stroke himself. Long, leisurely strokes the length of it, to the tip and back again. A nice firm pressure, which he eventually starts to alternate with a teasing, brushing motion up and down. This is just to get himself going.

Fanned out before him are all the photos he'd taken away from Stewie quite a while back when the kid wanted to be on the American version of _Jolly Farm_, and had posed for those pictures, some of them explicitly erotic. Of such, there are four that he has in front of him now. He actually really had disposed of the dick picture, incinerating it with a lighter, seeing as it hadn't really done anything for him. It just smacked of exploitation to him. And, being as there were no other parts of Stewie in the shot, it seemed almost separate from him, so that Brian didn't even necessarily associate it with Stewie. Thus, it had not been sexy to him.

He looks at those he has saved one-by-one as he pleasures himself, starting with the one he finds the least overwhelmingly arousing, as is his routine, while saving his favorite for last, to push him over the edge, ensure that he'll come hard. He's able to envision Stewie live and in-person, right there in front of him and striking these poses for his entertainment.

He despises himself for doing this. It's disgusting. He should be clapped in handcuffs and hauled off to jail. He possesses child porn, for fuck's sake.

He despises himself for doing this. And yet he continues to do it regularly, and tonight as well, his fingers curled firmly around his member, his palm rubbing pleasurably up and down at a steady pace.

He never even seriously contemplated disposing of the pictures. He knew, even before he'd left Stewie's room with them that day, that he'd stash them someplace secret so he could take them out at his leisure and jack off to them. But what adds to the erotic value they already provide in spades is the memory of what happened shortly after he'd been asked to take a look at those photos. It had been that encounter at the bar later that day that had intensified his interest in Stewie. When Stewie had touched him…_there_. He could trace his _realization_ of his attraction to Stewie to the moments following the revelation that "Karina" was really Stewie in drag. Brian had worked hard and drummed up an appropriately outraged, heterosexual reaction and threatened him, and the kid had ignored him and gone on to divulge his scheme to become a big star on _Jolly Farm. _While listening to Stewie's plan, a part of his brain was stuck stubbornly back on what had just transpired.

Even though Stewie had broken character and quickly revealed his true identity after Brian had put "Karina's" hand on his dick…for the couple of seconds that Stewie's fingers were on Brian's shaft, they had actually, seemingly automatically wrapped around it, and that grasp had been _tight_.

He shouldn't be thinking about Stewie like this. It's immoral, and absolutely impossible. Even if Stewie _had _held onto Brian's member like he'd waited all his short life to touch him there, he had_ also _removed his hand in a hurry before things could escalate even more regrettably. For all of Stewie's big talk, to be in a sexual situation for real is plainly more than he can handle. He's a fucking _baby _for Christ's sake!

As ashamed as Brian is about lusting after Stewie, there's something that's yet even _more_ alarming to him: he might not be able to exactly when the attraction started, but if his exuberant reaction to having the kid touch him in the bar (yes, he may have acted angry on the outside that to discover it'd been Stewie's hand on his genitals, but on the inside, he'd secretly been thinking that just made the whole thing ten times hotter) was anything to go by, he'd obviously been in denial for some time about even being attracted to Stewie.

Who knows what _else_ he might be concealing from himself?

Brian loves Stewie, of course, a lot, as a friend. But the more time goes by, the more he's had to confront the terrifying concept he may be _in love _with the child, too.

And if that's the case, if he _is_ in love with Stewie, that makes things so much worse. This has the potential to get way more out of whack (Brian cringes at his mental use of that word while he's doing what he's doing) if he _does_ have serious, romantic feelings for the kid. After all, how long can Brian really hold himself back from someone he's in love with? He'd foolishly allowed himself to imagine that he could have a real future with Lois, during that trip to Martha's Vineyard when they'd spent all time together, and he'd gone and flung himself at her, consequences be damned. He'd almost ruined his friendship with both her and with Peter as a result. If he's in love with Stewie, there's a real problem here. He can control his primal urges as long as they're purely primal. That makes it easier to live with himself; who's he hurting as long as nobody ever finds out about this? He's confident that this won't give him a penchant for lusting after other children. He's not a pedophile. It's just Stewie. Why does the kid have to be so…

He's getting more worked up the more he ruminates on the qualities that make up Stewie, as well as the qualities that make up their friendship. He thinks about Stewie's passion, both in intellectual matters and about the things that he cares about deeply on an emotional level. He thinks about how much he enjoys Stewie's company and their banter, and how Stewie understands him better than anyone else he's ever known.

Why does the kid have to be so…

Perfect for him.

The dog gasps loudly as the intensity of the thought speeds his hand along his increasingly rigid shaft.

"Briiiaaannn, I can't sleep, I was wondering if you'd make some hot chocolate with marshmallows for me?" Stewie's voice comes from somewhere overhead, probably the kitchen.

Brian's breath hitches, and his paw goes extra tight again on his cock, wanting to jerk faster at the sound of the voice of the object of his fantasy. However, he stops himself from doing anything so fucking asinine and instead, grants himself a mere brief moment to vent his frustration, growling softly in frustration. Then he hurriedly gathers up the incriminating pictures and scrambles to his feet.

"And not the kind that comes with those crappy little hard, dehydrated marshmallows." Stewie's voice is coming from the basement stairs now. "The soft and fluffy _real_ ones. I think we have some in the cupboard that came with that jokey Christmas card Carter and Babs sent me: _'You've been naughty, so here's the scoop; all you get for Christmas is snowman poop'._ Bravo! How delightfully clever! _What _an imagination, likening marshmallows to what snowman droppings would look like! Dear me! How droll!"

Brian throws himself onto the old, battered sofa that the family keeps down here. He then shoves the photos under the cushion next to him. A couple of dingy, somewhat mildew-y throw pillows reside on the sofa, and although his hard-on has rapidly waned from the anxiety brought about by thought of getting busted, he still grabs (hesitating for the briefest of seconds, not entirely sure that he wants to touch it) for one of the pillows and places it over his crotch. Moments later, his heart leaps into his throat at the sight of the kid when he appears around the corner at the bottom of the stairs. Brian nervously moves a slightly twitchy hand up to smooth back the hair on top of his head. He can only hope that he's composed-looking enough.

"Brian?

"Yeah?" the dog replies, a touch too eagerly, and voice a bit higher-pitched than normal.

The kid eyes him with high suspicion.

"What've you been up to?"

Brian feels a trickle of perspiration roll down the back of his neck. "Wha-whadaya mean?"

"Well, you look sweaty and guilty. What gives? Plus your voice just now sounded all panicky."

Stewie's gaze goes to the pillow in his lap. It doesn't take a genius to put two and two together, but there's one on the scene, anyway. Almost instantly a large, taunting grin spreads across his face.

"Oh ho ho, I get it _now_. Sorry man, I- I had no idea. Didn't mean to interrupt. I'll…uh, I'll just scram, then, shall I?" The kid starts backing up out of the room, smirking wildly. Brian, although irritated by this, doesn't attempt to say or do anything to recover lost dignity, as he's simply too relieved that Stewie knows nothing about just what Brian had been masturbating _to_.

And then…and then something genuinely horrific happens, and the bottom drops out of Brian's world.

He sees it happen as though in slow-motion. Sees Stewie stop on his way out of the room as something apparently catches the corner of his eye. Sees those eyes narrow into a squint. Sees the baby walk forward and finger the corner of a paper object sticking out from underneath the cushion beside Brian. Sees him lift the cushion slightly and pull out a handful of photographs.

Stewie sifts through them, looking blankly at each picture in turn. It takes him a little longer than it did last time to realize what's going on. It takes him so long to react that time seems to stand still. He just looks confused, and the dog is forced to watch, heart in his throat, as comprehension gradually dawns on the boy. And when it does, Stewie looks beyond stunned.

"Oh, my, god. You were- "

"No." The word pops out of him automatically. He's not even denying what he was doing with those pictures; he's expressing his disbelief at the horribleness of the situation he has suddenly found himself in. The 'no' is actually a 'why'. _Why,_ _for the love of_ _god, why did he have to catch me?_ _Why did this have to happen?!_

"No? Oh, so it's just a coincidence that they were there?" Stewie doesn't sound angry, as he's certainly entitled to be. Rather, his voice is strangely mild. "I thought you got rid of them."

Brian stumbles off the couch and nearly into the child. He rips the photos out of the Stewie's hands, then rushes past the baby and up the basement stairs. He runs as if he's got blinders on, with only one thought in mind, a giant blinking EXIT sign in his brain. It is the goal that he's running to.

_Door, door, door_…

On his way there, he violently sets about shredding the photographs he holds and once he is outside, he, still while running, curses the scraps as he casts them from his paws lets them scatter as they may around the doorstep.

The frosty nighttime breeze steals his breath and he stops at the sidewalk.

_This can't be happening. Oh, god, this can't be happening. This can't be fucking happening!_

And the _worst_ part, the absolute worst part, is that he can't stop thinking about an alternative version of what had just happened. One where Stewie, after finding out what Brian was pleasuring himself to, approached him with a seductive smile and extended a helping hand.

He hears the front door open and shut behind him, followed by the sound of little feet crunching on the snow, headed in his direction, getting closer and closer.

He feels the kid touch him on the elbow.

"Come back into the house with me, please."

Brian pulls away from the contact and staggers forward a few steps, shivering violently and not just from the weather. "Not…not right now, Stewie. Maybe not ever."

"Oh, god, can the melodramatics, Brian. If you'll just come back inside with me, we can talk this out in a reasonable fashion."

Brian snorts derisively, tears burning hot in his eyes. As if _reason _can have anything even remotely positive in store for him after what he's done. Reason, his old friend, wasn't there with him any of the countless times he'd tucked himself with those photos of Stewie, reason wasn't there when this attraction had started in the first place.

He really feels like this is the end of the world. Nothing can ever be normal between them again.

"Brian, come now, you're really beginning to piss me off!" The baby exasperatedly cries, running around to stand in front of Brian. "I'm not going back into the house until you come with me, and if you insist on staying out here much longer, one or both of us is going to freeze to death. And while it might be your aim to perish that way to punish yourself, _I _don't want any such thing for you. And it's very cruel of you to risk consigning _me _to a ghastly fate just because I love you with all my heart."

Those words of Stewie's, rushing out of him with such passionate abandon, couple with those eyes staring at with such lustrous emotion, bring it on home, full-force, at last.

He _is_ in love with Stewie. In this moment of realization, his heart bursts at the seams with that love…sinks like a stone at the awfulness of the knowledge.

"Stewie…I know…" He speaks softly, regretfully, each word feeling wrenched out of him, to the small, shivering child who has his tiny arms wrapped around himself in an effort to keep warm. "I know that you like me. I know that you have a…a crush on me, I've known it for quite some time. I appreciate what you're trying to do here. You don't want me to feel bad, but I deserve it. I deserve to feel bad. The fact that I've had impure thoughts about you is extremely immoral. You're just a kid." He hangs his head in disgrace and has to allow himself a short moment where he can pity himself for being such a stupid, degraded animal before he can go on.

He looks back up at Stewie, getting worked up now. "And seeing what you saw in the basement should have been a wake-up call for you. You might have thought that you wanted me to desire you, but didn't it freak you out to actually see the reality? Weren't you appalled?"

Stewie looks surprised. Slowly, he begins to shake his head, a wicked, insinuating smile grows on his face. "I was shocked, Brian, I won't attempt to deny that. It was not unlike when I was dressed as Karina and you put my hand on your crotch. I was shocked, but I was definitely not…displeased." He gives his voice a silky, sensual tone that provokes its intended reaction; Brian feels a shiver climb the length of his back. Then, as though he's been in Brian's head all this time when the dog's played that incident over in it: "Just in case you were wondering, the only reason I pulled away that time was that I couldn't bear to deceive you to that extent. Call me a silly old romantic, but I was determined that if we were going to do anything else with each other, we were going to do it with me as myself, not as Karina."

Brian's face feels like it's on fire. "You- you shouldn't be saying things like that to me."

"Why not? I mean them."

"Regardless. Th-th-th-they make no difference." He is so incredibly guilt-ridden. He ought to have known he would get caught with those pictures someday. Now, here he's gone and gotten Stewie's hopes up. It's all his fault. But he can't give Stewie what he says he wants, because Stewie doesn't _really_ know what he wants…or even if he does, he still doesn't know what's good for him.

"Brian. You have to listen to me, alright? You have to hear me out." The baby inhales a deep breath. He reaches out a hand to take Brian's paw, but then just as stubby fingertips brush their target, he self-consciously withdraws it. "I…I'm in love with you. Not _crushing on you_. Genuinely, profoundly, totally in love with you." The confession leaves him glowing in embarrassment and exhilaration. "And I hope you know me enough to know what that counts for. I don't know how I can prove to you that I'm ready for an adult relationship with you. All I can say is that you know me. You know what while I may have many childlike traits and be naïve about some things, I've also a ginormous intellect, and can be wise beyond my years. One thing I'm damn well not naïve about is this. I've spent so much time fighting my true feelings for you, pretending to everybody and myself that I love other people. Well, no more! I want you. You want me. Let's be together! My father is a freakin' certified retard! And yet he runs his own life. I'm a genius! Would you honestly try and tell me that I'm less capable of making decisions about my life than he is?"

He looks proud of himself now, the paragon of bravery and vulnerability, a beautiful sight standing in the cold winter air that seems to reverberate with the conviction of his words. It stops Brian's heart for a second. He longs to pull Stewie into his arms and promise him that he's right in there with him, that he's willing to take a chance, and is in it for the long haul.

_I can't take him up on his offer! I can't be with Stewie like that!_

Just when Brian is thinking that he'll have to take off running down the street, just to get away from this agonizing scene, fill his lungs with the cold winter air and either let it choke him to death or make it clear his brain, which is a state of confusion the likes of which he's never known, his reasonable streak finally returns to him, kicking in suddenly and saving the day.

_Why can't I? _

It's like an epiphany; as soon as Brian has that thought, the cloud parts. He realizes, with a suddenly clear mind, a swooping dip in his stomach, and a conscience eased, that the best of all possible solutions here is actually, for once, one that gives him what he wants.

"There's nothing wrong about our feelings for each other," says Stewie fiercely, boldly staring straight into Brian's eyes.

The dog is so stoked. It all makes sense now. Everything that Stewie had just said was so perfectly true, he doesn't know why he didn't think of it before. He guesses he just needed to hear it from Stewie, hear the kid argue these points as to why they should be together, these points to which there are not rational arguments. As usual, Brian, fool that he is, can never realize anything truly important on his own.

"I'd hoped you would say that," he confesses, scarcely audibly but very resolutely. The sound of his own voice saying those words produces a little jumping sensation in his gut.

Stewie smiles at him affectionately and maybe a little gloatingly.

Brian can only hope that nobody's watching, but he can't help himself. Yes, they've got a cop on one side of their house, but what are the odds that Joe's just staring out a window, let alone the one the street's visible from, right at this very moment? As for their next door neighbor on the other side, at this hour, Quagmire is likely already tucked into bed with tonight's designated tramp. Anyone else on the block who would witness what is about to happen and tell Peter and Lois about it would never be believed. Their word couldn't possibly stand up to Brian's, Peter's best friend, and Lois's close confidante, too. Their loyal, by all means trustworthy, family dog.

(Herbert, if he's watching, would be cheering him on, no doubt)

Drawing very near to the boy, Brian puts a finger beneath Stewie's chin, tipping the baby's head back. Gently, he kisses him on the lips, swallowing the surprised, shuddering little gasp he elicits from Stewie in so doing. In the back of his mind, Brian had half-expected it to be somewhat weird, this kiss. Weird in what way, he couldn't have said, just weird because of some basic facts about Stewie: he's a baby (at least chronologically speaking), and he's male. It was a foolish thought to have, though. The truth is, kissing Stewie (the few times he'd gotten roped into doing so in the past) had never been _weird_. Just awkward because, well, in the past Brian had always told himself before going into any liplock with the kid that it was _supposed _to be, and that he wasn't supposed to enjoy it. That was most probably it.

In any case, tonight their kiss is pure magic.

Stewie makes an adorable and flattering breathless sound as they pull apart, reaching up and touches his lips in disbelief. Brian gives a sharp, awkward chuckle that sounds almost like a bark. Joe has yet to come bursting out of his house, pointing a pistol at him, so Brian figures they're in the clear with their little transgression.

He ducks his head and scratches at the back of his neck self-consciously.

"Well, then. Ready to go back inside?" Stewie's voice is upbeat to the point of blissful.

Brian nods, and they turn as one to go in. Stewie spots the destroyed pictures lying in the snow.

"My poor pictures. You know, back when you took them from me, I was a little mad at you. They did turn out, as I know you will agree, splendidly. I really do know how to seduce the camera."

Brian doesn't say anything, only watches Stewie bend over and collect the sopping, ripped remnants of his photographs and the former crown jewels of Brian's porn stash. He stuffs them into the pocket of his overalls, and takes a pause, seemingly debating something within himself. Finally he looks up at the dog with a slightly tremulous smile.

"W-well…I can always have them replaced."

Brian doesn't know how to take this remark. He worries that Stewie could be contemplating going to see that pedophile photog again for replacement pictures, perhaps just to please Brian.

"Does Mr. 'Professional Photographer' have those pictures saved on file at his oh-so professional studio?" he asks contemptuously.

"I don't know," answers Stewie, looking unconcerned.

"But you wouldn't go back to him?" Brian queries, in a tone of _you'd better not_!

"No…" says Stewie slowly. "I-I meant with _you_ as the photographer." He peeps up at Brian, whose stern expression falls away as his jaw goes dumbly slack.

What Stewie has proposed sends the blood coursing in Brian's body slamming through it feverishly and headed in a definite direction. But surely they shouldn't be so reckless, surely they shouldn't rush things like this. Such an activity as what Stewie is proposing sounds like one of those things that would lead into another…

"W-wait, no, stop, just…_think_ for a moment about what you're saying," Brian urges, even though he'd _seen_ Stewie thinking over whether or not he wanted to put forth his suggestion. The next sentence the canine utters more for his own benefit than for Stewie's, because it's as though he won't fully believe it unless he says it out loud. "You're asking me to take erotic photos of you."

"I know what I'm doing," says Stewie, collectedly. "The house is empty, Bry. It'll be totally safe fun. So whadaya say?"

Speechless, Brian simply nods.

With their arms wrapped around each other, they head inside the house.

_Shutterbug_

Brian is standing in the middle of Stewie's room, waiting for the baby to return from hunting around the house for a camera. He's standing like a dunce, not knowing precisely what he should think or feel. He has a feeling sex might be on offer after this informal, impromptu photo shoot, and he's pretty much scared shitless. Things are moving so fast. What if it ruins things, for the fledging relationship formed outside to turn physical so soon?

A throat is cleared from somewhere off to the side, and Brian turns in the direction from whence it came.

Stewie is smiling at him shyly from the bedroom doorway, wearing a robe.

"Peter and Lois must have taken the digital," he says, walking over and handing the dog a 35mm.

Brian accepts it from him without looking at it, his eyes glued instead to the tot's jacquard-swaddled form. "Are you…uh…completely naked under there?" He is reasonably sure he's never been this embarrassed in his whole life.

Stewie winks showily.

"You'll just have to wait and see."

For the nth time, Brian wonders just when the hell this happened. When did Stewie become this entirely beguiling and desirable sex object? Brian has no better luck coming up with an answer to that question now than he ever did, because he can't think, can't move, can barely even breath with Stewie standing opposite him, giving him that sultry look.

"Okay," he says finally, swallowing with some difficulty. He tries to keep his voice level and is mostly successful. "Get on the bed."

Stewie does as he's told and climbs up onto the bar-less crib. "I await your direction."

If only Brian could pull himself together enough to give him some. For some time, all Brian is capable of doing is gawking at the tantalizing sight in front of him in awe.

Swallowing hard and blinking, he forces himself to snap out of his trance. At first, Brian can't drum up any creativity and just has Stewie reenact the poses he'd assumed in the pictures that had started this whole thing. Stewie gamely goes along with every request Brian makes. Gradually, the dog gets to be more at ease and becomes caught up in the game, leading him to pull inspiration from other sources beyond just those original racy pictures. He has Stewie emulate poses Brian has seen women from web and magazine porn do, as well as assume those pulled from the dirty depths of the dog's own imagination, as well.

He knows how hungrily he must be looking at Stewie, and he only hopes it won't frighten the kid away. So far Stewie has shown no signs of being intimidated or anything other than completely into what they are doing. It's amazing that they can do this without either's embarrassment or awkwardness being apparent. Brian's blatantly out of his sheath, and he'd observed Stewie noticing this quite a few minutes ago, and yet they just continue playing. It's the strangest phenomenon.

"Why don't you lose the robe?" He suggests it so casually, he's astounded at himself.

Dimpling with pleasure, Stewie complies, standing and shrugging the robe off of his shoulders. As it turns out, he was _not_ completely nude underneath it. He's got on a pair of underwear, but not white cotton briefs like he wore in the "professionally-done" photos. Oh, no. What he's sporting are ladies' satin panties- fairly skimpy, with cutout lace panels on the sides, and tented in a very obvious way.

"I thought you'd like them," smirks the baby triumphantly, easing himself back down into a reclining position, resting on both elbows.

"Spread your legs." Brian's voice is rough, dictatorial even, and he thinks he sees Stewie shudder slightly at the sound of it.

Parting his legs wide, Stewie then goes on to obey the dog's subsequent orders, cupping his own erection through the fabric of his panties, head tilted back a bit, eyes heavy-lidded and lips slightly parted and curved upward in the most tempting of smiles.

Brian can handle no more. His hard-on is becoming painful, and he's got to stop before he does something stupid and ruins everything, like jumping the kid. He's got to get a direct answer from Stewie _now_, so he knows whether he should stick around for gratification, or else hurry off to gratify himself. He clears his throat and lowers the camera.

"All- alright. I think we've got enough shots." Only too happy to turn and gain just one moment of privacy where Stewie can't see the evidence of his raging lust; whether it be in his expression or between his legs. He walks over and sets the camera down on the little table in the corner of the room. "Some- some good ones."

"You did an excellent job, sir," the baby compliments him in a honey-sweet voice. "I suppose now you expect payment, hmm?"

The canine pivots slowly on one foot and faces Stewie once more. He rubs nervously behind his ear and chuckles weakly. "H-how d'ya know I did a good job? I-I mean, y-you haven't even seen the photos yet."

"Well, the Quahog Mini Mart has a 1-hour photo service, and it shouldn't take much more than a 99 cent bin copy of a Jessica Alba movie and $3 six-pack of beer from Walgreens to bribe Carl into keeping quiet about the fact that the film contains quite a lot of kiddie porn," remarks Stewie. He flashes Brian an inviting smile. "Or…you could just forgo the pictures for the time being and have the real thing." He lays back, posture enticingly receptive-looking to whatever dirty desires Brian may have. "In the flesh."

Brian is mildly taken aback, even after having witnessed this kind of brazen behavior from the kid before. How the hell is Stewie so sexually self-assured? A few minutes ago, Brian had been like that, too, but now that this all-important moment has arrived, he's back to feeling doubtful.

For the meantime, though, he puts his reservations aside and joins Stewie in the crib. Stewie is instantaneously pressed up against him, arms around his neck and lips attached to Brian's. He is a natural-born kisser, it seems, his tongue probing the confines of Brian's mouth, and caressing the canine's own with passion and zeal. It feels right, so very right, but better than natural. Special in a way that Brian's never known before. When the need for oxygen forces them to break apart for a moment, Stewie takes the opportunity to pull down his panties, slide them down his legs, and throw them over the side of the crib. His pudgy little fingers tug insistently on the fur of the dog's upper arms, indicating that he wants Brian on top of him. The dog gives in to what Stewie wants and mounts him, but he doesn't start making out with him again; rather, he takes a moment, as he's leaning over him, to look down into his face and ask solemnly,

"Are you…sure, Stewie?"

Stewie cradles each side of the dog's muzzle in his hands and nods. "Yes. As sure as sure can be. I've wanted this for so long." His expression somehow manages to be shamelessly wanton, and yet serious.

Brian sighs, his libido rejoicing at the green light he's been given, but still. This isn't something to be embarked upon lightly. "Kid, everything that's happened tonight has happened at pretty much a break-neck pace," he says, beginning to thrust slowly against the baby, whose eyes immediately roll back in his head. He gives a little moan and starts to hump Brian back. They rut against each other, an unhurried, sinuous, rolling motion. Brian can't stop himself. He's not trying to influence Stewie's decision, honest he's not, although he supposes what he's just instigated could be taken either as a message aimed at enticing the kid into doing more, or, conversely, that he wants him to be content with just dry humping. In a minute, Brian speaks again. "An hour ago, you were just my friend Stewie. And now you're- we're-"

"This," supplies Stewie, gazing up at the dog dreamily, as though becoming lost in his eyes. The baby stills his hip movements in the earnestness of the moment.

Brian likewise stops thrusting. "Yeah," he says softly. "So…I'm just saying…if you weren't ready for the whole shebang…"

Stewie snorts. The baby's eyes, as they gaze up at Brian, shine with laughter. "'The whole shebang'? No, no, no. It's the whole 'hebang', Bry, and this 'he' can't wait to be banged by you."

Brian reaches a hand down between his lover-to-be's legs and Stewie opens them obligingly at the slightest brush of Brian's fingers along one of his thighs. With the tip of one finger, Brian touches Stewie's entrance, just skimming it over the tiny, puckered orifice.

"It's going to be a tight fit, if I can even get in there at all."

"Well, just fold down the side view mirrors," Stewie nonchalantly tosses back at him. Brian shoots him a puzzled look.

"When I pretended to be a high school student that one time," the baby explains, "and had that date with Connie D'Amico at Anal Point. You told me what it's like when people have sex that way."

Brian can't up with a response to this. He remembers that day, which had been back during a time when the situation they were in at present would have been- at least for Brian- not only unthinkable, but undesirable (at least, Brian doesn't _think_ he'd started falling for Stewie by then).

It seems so long ago.

Stewie kisses Brian on the nose, then leans in and whispers into his ear.

"Let's get me ready for it."

He wriggles out from under the dog and rotates himself so that his feet are now lying up beside Brian's head. He flips over onto his back and spreads his legs wide. Brian is lying on his side, and leans over one these legs to investigate. His heart is pounding a frantic tattoo in his chest. He stares at the diminutive opening in front of him for several seconds before he lifts his paw to his mouth to suck on one of his fingers. He is completely out of his comfort zone here. Having wetted his finger to his satisfaction, he brings it over to Stewie's opening and presses. The child tenses as Brian's finger pushes past the ring of muscle and inside of him. Brian wiggles it around as best he can, but the child keeps tensing. Seeing that Stewie isn't quite where he needs to be relaxation-wise, Brian realizes that he might need to try something else. Never really imagining that he would do _this_ again, he leans forward and gives a long lick between Stewie's cheeks, over the surface of the anus. He repeats the process numerous times before taking his tongue and actually pushing it into the child. He makes it lap and wriggle away in there as Stewie sighs happily and makes other soft sounds of enjoyment. A couple minutes into this, he feels Stewie suddenly lick his member. Brian groans low in his throat and the baby does it again. Stewie then sucks the head of the cock between his lips, and swirls his tongue around it. He then engulfs about half of the dog's shaft, covering the rest with his hand and starts to work his mouth up and down it. Brian abandons his task of prepping Stewie to concentrate on his own pleasure. Stewie uses both hands to stabilize the portion of the cock he hasn't taken into his mouth, and they stroke and massage firmly as the kid continues to bob his head, lips sucking and tongue stroking, everything working in symphony to drive Brian wild.

Brian is afraid to let this persist for much longer, because if it does, they might not get to go any further.

"If you want me to focus on doing this right for you, you really shouldn't distract me so much," he says by way of getting Stewie to stop the devastatingly pleasurable treatment.

Stewie releases the member from his mouth (Brian inwardly both curses and sighs in relief) and turns himself around so they're face-to-face once more.

"Well, I think I'm all set to move on to the main event now in any case. So c'mon, Brian. Let's get it _awn_."

Brian situates himself between Stewie's legs. He does so hope this won't be a disaster. He grabs hold of Stewie's ankles and lifts the kid's lower half up slightly so that it'll easier for him to push in. He is awash with desire and worry. He's said in the past that one of the best parts about sleeping with the sexually inexperienced is that they have very little basis for comparison, so it doesn't really matter if you don't perform well. Well, at this moment, nothing matters more to Brian than performing well. He fervently wants this to be good for Stewie. Better than good. He wants to give Stewie something to sing about the morning after. So he really, _really_ hopes he doesn't only manage to thrust four or five times and then explode.

Stewie urges him on impatiently.

"Do it, Brian. God, I love you so much."

"I love you, too," Brian murmurs, sort of wishing he wasn't saying those words, for the first time with a romantic meaning behind them, to Stewie while they're in their current positions. He can't spare the concept too much concern, however, as he's mainly focused on satisfying a desperate need now. He checks one last time to make sure he's lined up correctly, and then, shoving his lower half forward, breaches Stewie with one long, slow, smooth, continuous drive, up to his knot.

"Oh, _myyyyy_," Stewie hisses out once Brian has stilled and is letting the kid adjust to his length. He grits his teeth, his hands up beside his head and balled up into fists, but his open eyes are dry and still lust-glazed.

"See? Snug accommodations, but you fit just fine," the kid says, playful.

"Mm. Snug is very, very good," Brian grunts, Stewie's walls clamping around his shaft even more intensely than he had anticipated. It's as if they're hugging him. It's as though every part of Stewie loves him. "You'd tell me if it was too much, wouldn't you?" the dog pants, savoring the amazing, hot and tight confines. He can't wait to begin moving, but he's still trying to make sure that Stewie can handle this after all.

"Of course," Stewie practically snaps at him. The dog understands his short temper. After their discussion outside about Stewie basically not being a 'real' baby, his concern is probably starting to sound annoyingly borderline patronizing. "And if I'm not getting any enjoyment out of it, I will definitely make that fact known, too. I love you, Brian, but I won't fake it for you."

Conceding that in all likelihood Stewie's just made a very true statement about himself, Brian moves at last, getting a smooth, gentle, regular thrust going.

The baby below him takes short, controlled little audible breaths, in and out through his mouth. His eyes stay wide open, watching Brian's face so closely it makes the dog a tad self-conscious. He finds that he can't make eye contact with Stewie while the kid's doing this, but steals sideways glances at him instead, and sees the way the boy is studying Brian's face with almost scientific curiosity. Finally, after a minute the dog begins to feel foolish and braves meeting Stewie's gaze directly, at which point the look shining in those lovely, large orbs of the child becomes one replete with tenderness.

This Brian finds to be a major turn-on, and induces him to up the speed and force of his thrusting, and Stewie moans aloud for the first time.

Brian is quick to slow his pace and give Stewie a solicitous, inquiring look.

"That noise meant something positive, don't worry about it," his partner rasps out vehemently, reading the question in the canine's eyes. Nodding, Brian resumes his steadily pounding away at the boy, while Stewie's pleasure lets itself be known through alternating whimpers and moans.

Then, Brian adjusts the angle of his thrusting slightly, which produces the heartiest, throatiest noise to come out of Stewie yet.

"_Keep it right there, please_!" Stewie, his voice doing almost a 180 from the deep, husky moan he'd just unleashed and emerging in a squeak. He starts to pops his hips up to meet Brian's thrusts.

"Ohhhhh, Brian! It feels _so_ good! Harder!"

Brian starts to pump as hard and fast as he can. Stewie's head is tossing on the pillow, his eyes closed tightly as he mutters all kinds of small, sensual sounds. It's not much longer before he is undone by the act, biting his lower lip and tensing. The lids of his closed eyes flutter, and his mouth opens wide, letting out a loud cry as he achieves orgasm, his whole little body shaking with the force of it.

Brian watches his small lover climax and feels the kid's muscles reflexively clench around his penis. He gets in a good couple more strokes before he, too, succumbs to orgasm, and is carried away on the glorious tides of ecstasy.

He pulls out and more or less tumbles off Stewie and onto the mattress.

"Oh, my god," he and Stewie both gasp out in unison as they lay panting side by side.

_Soul Mate_

When Brian wakes up in the morning, Stewie is standing up in the crib with his back to the dog, wearing his robe and just tying the sash around it. It takes a moment for it to sink in, all that had taken place last night, and when it all comes roaring back to him, it's a major moment of _whoa_. Brian recloses his eyes and allows himself to properly appreciate the finality of the situation, which is awesomely overwhelming. He's incredibly happy this morning, though he's also keenly aware of the surrealism of this huge change that has occurred; once he opens his eyes again and officially begins the morning, he'll begin his first day of being in a relationship with Stewie, and one can't discount that that's a lot to take in.

There are things he's not certain of- namely, just how he and Stewie are going to fake normalcy with and in front of the family- but there's nothing to do but to push them aside for the moment and deal with them

Because what he _is_ certain about is the most important thing of all.

He reopens his eyes and sits up on his elbow.

His first concern is assuring himself of Stewie's wellbeing.

"Are you okay?"

Stewie smiles radiantly as he turns to look at his lover. "Never better, Bry." Bowing down, he pecks Brian on the lips. He pulls back and rights himself. "How did you sleep?"

"Uh…wonderfully," replies Brian with a slight, faintly sheepish smile. "I always do, after…"

"Sex?" Stewie grins, finishing Brian's sentence for him eagerly. "We had sex last night, didn't we? I had sex, Brian! Can you believe? They say that one's first time is life-changing. Do I look any different to you this morning?"

Brian groans exaggeratedly and rolls his eyes. "This whole deflowering business is rather embarrassing. Just be cool, Stewie."

"Brian?" calls a voice from the floor below. Lois's voice.

Brian and Stewie stare at each other in shocked dismay.

"_Shit_!" cries Brian as he tries to roll to a standing position. He overestimates the width of the crib, however, and ends up falling out of it- the bars still being gone- and onto his ass. He looks back up at the crib, with its mussed, stained sheets and then over to Stewie, panic-stricken. "Didn't you hear them come in?! What the fuck are we gonna do? This room could not be screaming out 'mating ground' any louder!"

"No, I didn't hear them! I was sort of in a blissful post-coital trance- which is entirely your fault, I might add. But calm down, Brian. Us freaking out is not going to help anything."

Brian can practically see the gears turning in the infant's head, and knows the brilliant child has got a strategy forming. Stewie picks up a box of sanitary wipes Brian hadn't even been aware were on the bed until then. Now that he's looking, though, he sees several used ones lying amidst the tangled sheets and realizes Stewie must have been cleaning himself out. Just more proof of his high I.Q. and self-sufficiency. The kid tosses them at Brian, who hurriedly proceeds to clean himself off. Stewie, pulling hard on the tangle of sheets, strips the crib of its linens. Then, holding them in his hands, he runs over to his toy box. Brian, done with wiping himself, glances at the clock on the wall and sees that it is almost noon. They slept for a long time. Transferring his gaze back to where Stewie was last, he sees that the kid is there no longer, but across the room, throwing the wadded up sheets inside of his hidden lair. Brian hastens over to toss in the used wipes, too, too paranoid to dispose of them in the garbage. It was unlikely that Lois would notice them, but she might. Stewie has made his way back to the toy box by now, and pulls once more on the baseball bat, making the door to Stewie's secret room close again.

He then swiftly climbs on top of his changing table, and motioning for Brian to stand on the stool in front of it. Brian gets the message about what Stewie is endeavoring to stage, and takes his designated place on the stool. He grabs a diaper and starts to put it on the kid, trying to look natural.

When Lois calls for him again, he shouts back to her, "In here, Lois!"

In short order, she has entered the baby's bedroom.

"Sorry, Lois, I couldn't get Stewie to go to sleep last night, so I put on one of his favorite movies and stayed up to watch it with him. He didn't nod off until near the end, and we did a bit of sleeping in."

"Oh, it's alright, Brian," the woman says, not suspecting a thing. "I know what a handful he can be. Why don't you just leave it to me to get him dressed."

"Okay," Brian agrees, more than willing not have to be around her just now. However, when he's almost to the door, he realizes that he hasn't even asked her what she and Peter are doing back already, which must be considered pretty darn odd.

"Uh…what are you doing back so soon, though?"

"Oh, it's the stupidest thing, really," Lois answers, as she works on Velcro-ing Stewie into the new diaper. "That voucher that Quagmire gave Peter? Turns out he'd gotten it from this woman he'd been messing with who's the manager of the Park Barrington. She eventually found out that he was using them to take _other_ women to the hotel and broke things off with him. And when Peter made the mistaking of mentioning this morning at the breakfast bar just who he got the voucher from, the manager overheard him and immediately revoked its validity and kicked us out!"

"Oh…that's too bad. That Quagmire…yeah…all of that…all of that's pretty stupid alright," Brian mutters, then turns, exits the room and heads for the ground floor. All the while he's making his dawdling way down the stairs, he tells himself to keep his composure and all will be well.

Peter's in the front room, and oddly, isn't already loafing on the couch, which he ordinarily would be as soon as he got home from anywhere. Instead, he's standing up and appears to be waiting for something.

Brian hops down off the last step and greets his friend, doing his best to sound laidback and normal.

"Hey, Peter."

He's impressed with how well he succeeds.

"Hi, buddy," Peter smiles at him.

"I'm sorry about your voucher." And he means this wholeheartedly.

"Stupid Park Barrington bitch," Peter grumbles. "I got her back, though. Before we left I put a stink bomb in the toilet." He giggles in delight at his prank.

Brian chuckles lightly. "A stink bomb, huh?"

"Yeah, just a simple prank." Peter pauses for a moment, appears to think. "T-the, uh, the stink bombs that kids sometimes make to cause some light-hearted mayhem at school… those are the ones made by putting a stick of dynamite in the toilet with your poo, and then lighting it, right?"

"Uh…no."

"Oh, well, it's still going to be a great weekend for the Griffins, anyway. 'Cause I came up with a great idea for something for us all to do as a family."

"Peter, did you tell him already?" Lois asks from the middle of the stairs, balancing Stewie on her hip. She walks the rest of the way down and deposits her infant son on the floor near where the dog is standing.

"So guess what, you guys?" says Peter, now that both Brian and Stewie are before him, listening.

"We're gonna to go swing by Woonsocket and pick up Chris and Meg, they'd be coming home tonight, anyway," Lois announces.

"And from there we're gonna drive to this choose-and-cut Christmas tree farm in Wrentham, Mass," Peter finishes excitedly.

"A tree farm?" says Brian, repulsed. He can't say that he has extensive knowledge about them, but the idea of them goes against his first instinct as a dog of a liberal political persuasion. "Oh! Oh, great! We're going to celebrate peace on earth and goodwill towards men by aiding in deforestation."

"Oh, for crying out loud, Brian," Stewie jeers. "Christmas trees are a sustainable crop. What, I suppose you think that fake trees, made out of PVC from a dwindling supply of fossil fuels in a factory that produces tons of pollution, are a better option? When you buy a real tree, you don't 'aide in deforestation'. _The trees grow back. _How else do you think those tree farms stay in business, mm?"

"Don't be such a Debbie Downer, Brian," says Peter, also blowing by Brian's concerns without a backward glance. "'C'mon, everybody, the car's still runnin'. Let's get a move on."

"Well, just a minute, Peter," Lois says, "I wanna brew some coffee real quick to stick in a thermos for the road."

"First one in the car gets to pick the tunes!" Peter shouts, running eagerly out the door without any acknowledgment of what Lois had said.

A moment later, "Surfin' Bird" is heard emanating loudly from the car's speakers.

Lois heaves a sigh of frustration, pinches the bridge of her nose, and squeezes her eyes shut for a moment.

"I think a Tylenol or ten for the road, too."

She shuffles back toward the stairs, presumably to seek out the medicine cabinet in the bathroom.

"Well, this isn't going to be awkward in the least," grumbles Brian. He starts to pace back and forth before the sofa, a lame-ass attempt to work off some of the tension that had started to build in him since he realized that Peter and Lois were home. "I didn't think I'd have to be in such close quarters with the others so soon after being with you. I thought I'd have, you know, more time to work out a strategy of how to act around them."

"I'll tell you how to act," Stewie says, coming to stand in front of Brian and blocking the path his pacing had been taking. "Just the same way you always do. Like the loveable douche you are." He smirks teasingly, walking his fingers up and down the canine's chest.

"Thanks," Brian tells him dryly, moving away and finally succumbing to the notion that he has to head on out to the car now. He moves toward the door, Stewie following close behind. "That's real helpful."

"Well, easier said than done, I know," responds Stewie, pattering over to the coat closet and retrieving the little puffer jacket he wears in the winter. He motions in a way that makes it obvious that he expects Brian to help him into it. The dog hesitates, then obliges, taking it from him and slipping it over the baby's shoulders. He helps him put his arms into the sleeves, zips the jacket up for him, then finishes the process by pecking his young lover on the lips.

"But," Stewie continues, "we'll get through today just fine, you'll see. And every day afterward, too. Because this is real and true and-"

"Love."

"Precisely."

Brian opens the door and they both walk out into a clear, calm winter day. Neither thrilled to be going on the day's designated activity with the rest of the Griffin crew and trading in love scenes for ludicrous family shenanigans. But both truly feeling that, all things considered, it's still a season for celebration.

_**~ The End ~**_


End file.
